Beach Planet

First topic message reminder :

Scott's probably around here somewhere, trying to recover from James.

The water's pretty nice.

Perfect place to dump slavers.

"thank you... " He bowed his head again, unable to rely on facial expressions thanks to the mask that covered most of his features, he had to rely on exaggerated body language to convey things. "I am rather used to people's fear, but they do not usually become so violent. " He looked to Starr "You are a shape changer yes?"

--

"OCEAN!" Matt declared loudly. "yes!"

"Ocean sounds good" Shane said with a grin at the other male's excitement

~~~
"Yes, I am a shapechanger. I have found the form of an acid dragon to be quite handy at times" Starr said with a smile as she turned to go back to Vestia "We can go straight to Vestia unless you want to come to pick up the package with us."

Ellie ran for the water, yelling a battle cry.

"I am at your disposal." He bowed. "I will not divert you from your tasks."
He glanced to Kay, but was too polite to ask why he didn't speak, even though he really was curious. Perhaps he'd injured his vocal cords, or perhaps he was a species who couldn't speak. Who knew?

Kay smiled back. [We should introduce ourselves. I am Kay, she is Starr.]

"Armin Den-Skradare" The spider nodded. "Or, just Armin if you would prefer. "

Matt stared at the ocean for a while, just marvelling at the bigness of it. Then he followed Ellie into the water.

The sound of an engine revved nearby the people on the beach, and a vehicle drove by, carrying something very large in the bed of the truck, and it was covered by a tarp as the android that had spoken with Matthew earlier balanced next to the hidden thing. They were driving to a more reclusive area of the beach...

Ellie wallowed in the water like a buffalo, not caring that she was still wearing her normal clothes. Hey, Matt could dry them out anyway!
She looked at Matt, wanting to see how he was taking being surrounded by this much water, then heard the sound of the truck and looked around at it curiously.

Whoever was driving the truck paid no mind to them, and neither did the android if he noticed them at all. They drove off, down the beach and soon out of sight but did leave tracks in the sand.

Matt waded in to about waist depth, the waves were weird and the salt in the water was strange to him. He didn't really care about trucks, I mean, there was loads of stuff going on and there was all this water! He ducked under a wave.

Shane looked to the truck, frowning curiously at it as it moved away.

~~~
"I am Starr" She said with a smile "Kay is one of the medics on Vestia. If you don't mind, I would like to have all business done with at once. Just in case something else happens."

"Hey guys, I wanna go spy on the creepy truck," Ellie said.

"Not alone" Shane said, looking to her then after the truck again

Armin nodded. "Of course."

---

Matt surfaced, looking at Ellie. "Creepy truck?" Well, sure, why not? The ocean wasn't going anywhere right?

Ellie plowed her way out of the water and followed the truck tracks, moving secretively and dripping water across the dry sand.

Starr smiled gently at him and headed to pick up her package.

~~
Shane followed the tracks with Ellie to see what was going on now. "You know them from somewhere?" He asked since he hadn't been there to see Matthew off.

"That robot's buddies with Matthew," Ellie explained.

Matt followed, drying himself off as they moved. Eugh, sand got everywhere.. so did salt.
He could move pretty quietly though, and padded off across the beach after Ellie and Shane.

"Slavers already up to their usual slaver shit then?" He spoke quietly. "Told you we should have spaced em all."

"Yeah. Too late now, I guess," Ellie said. "Well if they attack, you can use the whole ocean against them to protect us."

A strange smile crossed Matt's face. "Good point."

--

Kay and Armin followed Starr to pick up her parcels. Armin would even offer to carry them, he had a lot of saddlebags attached to his abdomen.

They eventually caught up to the truck, which was parked in a murkier part of the ocean, away from the tourist attractions. The first person to step out of the car was Drakkan, slightly smaller stature than Matthew but shared his eyes, though did have a bit of a lighter skin tone. "Gnu, set up the equipment for us, please." The Drakkan said, looking out at the ocean.

Gnu must have been the android that was sitting on the back of the truck, because the blade-footed robot gracefully stepped off. "Right away, Sir!" He said cheerily, and removed the tarp to reveal a large steel box. Despite its obvious weight, the android picked it up and carried it with alarming ease, giving away the amount of strength the bot probably had. Two more figures emerged. One was Lai, and the other, Matthew, although the captain looked cleaner and was wearing casual clothes for once. He looked nervous, but excited at the same time.

Matt tensed, trying to resist the anger that was already rising inside him. That smug bastard, he shouldn't be free, he certainly shouldn't be able to continue doing his nasty business. He grit his teeth, clenching his fists but remaining silent as they watched.

"It's okay Matt, you can always murder them later," Ellie said soothingly. "I wanna see what they're up to."

Shane nodded and searched his pockets "Anyone bring anything to record them?"

Starr smiled at the spider and shook her head, making the packages disappear to her shuttle "No need, I can send them there as is."

Gnu set down the steal box and unveiled a small keypad. He pressed a few buttons and the steel box sprang to life, unraveling its insides to reveal a floating Worktable filled with arcana measuring instruments, along with a small computer screen and keyboard, as well as a small refrigerator-like thing that contained glowing crystals: purified arcane shards.

"Tell me why I'm doing this again?" Matthew grimaced at the other Drakkan as he pulled out machine work from the back of the car as Lai watched on in curiosity, silent. The slaver put on the machine wear like a mechanical shirt, with an prototype energy core in the chest area and the sleeves ran all the way down to his palms and form a small, smooth circular disk.

"Because, this is payback for not getting all the things I asked for. Plus, I've already had my fair share of brushing and rebooting Gnu from this thing. It's your turn." The strange Drakkan stuck out his tongue playfully at the larger Matthew.

"I told you, I had to get rid of something to get her off my ass. Be grateful you still got the other vial and the files. That is something, right?"

"True." The stranger began booting up the computer.

"Why are we out here, anyway?" Matthew asked, walking over to the other man.

"Because I'd rather not put other people in danger of this in case something goes wrong. No ones going to die if we stay away from buildings... Though you might be blown backwards a bit." He grinned.

Matt rummaged through his pockets and extracted  a phone. His pocket dimension was great for keeping stuff dry during impromptu swims. Horah. He tossed it toward Shane.

--

"Oh that is a useful trick." Armin declared. "Extremely useful. "

Shane took it and found the camera to start recording the slavers.

~~~
"Yes, but it has it's drawbacks, nothing alive and I can only send, not recall" Starr said then shrugged "I was forced to leave before I could learn that part."